Patch 99 - April 23, 2009 - Last double digit patch.

[Faust]

The fast cast hold is something that is pretty concrete from my research. I have found numerous articles describing fast casting by waiting "2.2" seconds to bypass the recovery delay. The timespan was more than likely 2.25 instead of 2.2 seconds due to the nature of OSI timers being in increments of 0.25s. This makes a lot of sense in a logical perspective too. The point of the skill(recovery) delay addition in late '98 was to fix an exploit involving UOExtreme and UOPlugin. This patch pretty much rendered casting multiple spells back to back obsolete by adding the delay.

If you take a closer look there is a reason the 2.25 timer was used. The last spell in the book that being an 8th circle spell is exactly 2.25 seconds. This would require the delay to be this long to account for ALL spells to be blocked when casting back to back. For example, let's say that the delay was put at 1.5 seconds like you stated... This would mean any spell over a 5th circle spell would be a 100% fast casted back to back at all times. We both know that it was impossible to fast cast an explosion/eb or eb/eb without waiting a delay at all times.

This would be something that my confidence is awfully high in for being precise to the way it worked based on my research. I have even ventured across old EasyUO scripts that utilized a 2.2 pause inside of them after casting a spell.


The change to the disarm delay on the other hand is something that is completley wrong and incorrect...

[Jack]

test center pvp is worse then before

[Kraarug]

Interrupts seem to work about right. The mage I was playing against couldn't reliably cast while getting hit with 100 dex and that is certainly T2A correct.

I noticed something amiss with insta-hit though but that's because I am not clear as to what the weapon refresh is based on with the Test Center so I couldn’t time it without knowing that basis.

Playing blind that way would certainly make someone feel that things were messed up.

Also, compared to how things worked before, not having a refresh timer as reliable as a metronome would certainly seem bad if ones whole strategy was based on it. More so if their razor macro was set to a fixed value.

[Faust]

The disarm delay is gone on test center as you suggested Kraaug...

Weapons cannot be refreshed anymore.

[Kraarug]

The disarm delay is gone on test center as you suggested Kraaug...

Weapons cannot be refreshed anymore.

Do you mean that they are not refreshed at all, or based on a fixed fast timer or upon a fast wrestling timer?

[Faust]

There is no way to reset your timer based on anything but the regular timer...

It won't ever be based on wrestling for reasons that were stated already by me and the staff. This was used previously and was utter failure to replicate the feature. Again, for reasons that was presented to you several dozens times already..

[Kraarug]

There is no way to reset your timer based on anything but the regular timer...

It won't ever be based on wrestling for reasons that were stated already by me and the staff. This was used previously and was utter failure to replicate the feature. Again, for reasons that was presented to you several dozens times already..

Well, it seems as if it was better than nothing right?

[Faust]

No, re-creating something based on inaccuracies that creates even more inaccuracies isn't right at all...

My theory behind the implementation of the disarm delay based around fixing the double hit bug was incorrect, but the logic behind the feature and its addition is precisely correct to this patch and the time frame that was listed.

My research...

Patch February 26th, 1999
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.

Markee's Dragon February 26th, 1999
10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon.

UO Stratics Early February 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.

First paragrah is a patch in the actual patch notes..
Second paragraph is an explanation of the patch note at markee's dragon..
Third paragraph is an article on stratics written in early February '99 griping about the upcoming changes..

Fact Sheet:
- The disarm delay is still in Utlima Online today with a very small slight modification over the decade that the game mechanic has existed.
- Only time the disarm delay has EVER been mentioned anywhere including patch notes is in the '99 stratics article.
- The disarm delay does not exist in the UO Demo, which was last compiled in August/September of '98.
- The only thing found even remotely related to a "fix surrounding disarming/arming" is a disarm delay...

What else really needs to be said?

Finesse, said that patch was a fix for an exploit where you could literally machine gun a weapon.

My theory claiming the exploit was the double hit bug fix was in fact incorrect after doing some research on it. However, that was the only logical reasoning behind this addition that I could come up with at that time. I know that it wasn't the fix for the double hit bug for sure now after reading an article mentioning the exploit in the fall of '99 needing to be fixed asap. I have a good feeling that this patch actually created the so called "double hit bug" and the two are in fact one in the same. You are able to get two swings off in a matter of 2 seconds utilizing this feature by hitting with a hally unequipping and hitting again very briefly..

Again, my theory may in fact be incorrect... but the implementation of the two second disarm delay is a hundred percent correct surrounding that patch.

[Finesse]

i beleive fausts theory on weapon hits to be correct.

faust i dont think you get what im saying about fast cast though

what i mean is to fast cast a weaken

weaken spell timer[time to cast] + 1.5 seconds then fastcast is allowed.

[Orsi]

What exactly was put in on the Test Center that doesn't work, and how does that go against Kraaug's wrestling idea?

[Kraarug]

i beleive fausts theory on weapon hits to be correct.

faust i dont think you get what im saying about fast cast though

what i mean is to fast cast a weaken

weaken spell timer[time to cast] + 1.5 seconds then fastcast is allowed.

The issue I have with Fausts theory on the weapon swings is that it ignores all the other swing timer varibles and sets a constant 'refresh rate'. That just does not seem like it would hold water because the problem would have been detected in testing the fix and certainly would have been noted and complained about by players.

Also, the source for the 2000ms flat timer is not very percise. My 2 seconds could be anywhere from 1750 ms to 2750 seconds. I'm assuming that Lord Hades personal mind clock wasn't calibrated to ms either so basing a system on such a statement is a little weak.

Add all that together, plus the lack of definative era statements and two published statics tables showing how to calculate attack speed and the case for a flat timer is hard to defend.

[Faust]

There weren't many people during that time that actually understood how to use the mechanic. You obviously were one of those people if you actually played. I have two well renowned players saying that it was possible that being Nighthawk of Baja and The Dread Lord Ifrit of Catskills. Ifrit and I both argued extensivley to try getting this feature fixed and added to DFI t2a before it died.

Nighthawk - http://www.wtfman.com
The Dread Lord Ifrit - http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaon ... ?id=202762

Here is proof that the double hit bug existed after skill locks were implemented which was patched in November 1999...

(4) PvP Balance
I'm not hoping for a radical melee/archery/magery rebalance here - just get rid of the damn double hit bugs and broken combos. The simplest fix for most of the problems would be twofold - first, put in a delay to equip weapons and second, have equipping anything other than a spellbook disrupt spell casting.

It is quite clear that this guy is suggesting that there should be a huge delay that restraints you from equipping a weapon period to resolve this situation. Cylcing weapons is the way that you refresh a hally swing... I'm sure it's just another coincidence after all though... This person further got his wish list fullfilled when they removed pre-casting altogether two months later having items being moved around would cancel spell casting.

This is just another example that the patch in 2.26.99 didn't fix the so called exploit to manipulate the timer that Cortez continues claiming.

[Finesse]

its makes me laugh that this system isnt even being tested when everything should be considered b4 launching this on real shard.

[Kraarug]

There weren't many people during that time that actually understood how to use the mechanic. You obviously were one of those people if you actually played. I have two well renowned players saying that it was possible that being Nighthawk of Baja and The Dread Lord Ifrit of Catskills. Ifrit and I both argued extensivley to try getting this feature fixed and added to DFI t2a before it died.

Nighthawk - http://www.wtfman.com
The Dread Lord Ifrit - http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaon ... ?id=202762

Here is proof that the double hit bug existed after skill locks were implemented which was patched in November 1999...

(4) PvP Balance
I'm not hoping for a radical melee/archery/magery rebalance here - just get rid of the damn double hit bugs and broken combos. The simplest fix for most of the problems would be twofold - first, put in a delay to equip weapons and second, have equipping anything other than a spellbook disrupt spell casting.

It is quite clear that this guy is suggesting that there should be a huge delay that restraints you from equipping a weapon period to resolve this situation. Cylcing weapons is the way that you refresh a hally swing... I'm sure it's just another coincidence after all though... This person further got his wish list fullfilled when they removed pre-casting altogether two months later having items being moved around would cancel spell casting.

This is just another example that the patch in 2.26.99 didn't fix the so called exploit to manipulate the timer that Cortez continues claiming.

I can tell you that once I built my dexxer I had very little reason to play either one of my tank mages again. Consitantly I was able to down mages and lost only 1v1 if I ran out of something or made a mistake.

That game play is not replicated here. Something big is amiss and while you are complianing about having to wait .4 more seconds for a chance at a 40 HP swat timed with ebolt damage I can tell you that what we have here makes playing a dexxer nonviable. It's certainly not T2A.

Simply put, the players on Chessy were pretty good at PvP and night after night I was out fighting. A consistant 2 second hally whack, timed with combos, would have cased more damage than I could have healed and, instead of the mage running off screen hoping for mana and trying to avoid hit, it would have been my 1999 dexxer (like my 2009 UOSA dexxxer) and that my friend didnt' happen 1v1 against a mage.

(4) PvP Balance
I'm not hoping for a radical melee/archery/magery rebalance here - just get rid of the damn double hit bugs and broken combos. The simplest fix for most of the problems would be twofold - first, put in a delay to equip weapons and second, have equipping anything other than a spellbook disrupt spell casting.

I'll look at that statement again. This is the first I heard of a double hally hit bug existing in late 1999. It seems that what he's describing is precasting because, according to your research, we already had a disarm delay.

[Finesse]

it is true that dexers didnt take nearly as much damage but that was mainly because mages could not abuse them with hallys armour took alot more damage away than it does here i assure you of that.